NOTE: Ceremonial and burial articles being returned
have shown traces of arsenic - also mercury, DDT, and
other poisons were used for preservation.

This is an index to ongoing issues concerning the desecration of graves
and the stealing and selling of religious and ceremonial articles of
Native American Indians.

No respect is being shown, either for the feelings of people, or for the
applicable laws, such as the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the
Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, and the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Graves are being trampled, bodies of ancestors are being bulldozed,
clothing and bodies are being sold. Irresponsible people are in charge of
some of the archaeological digs.

Indifference, and in some instances an intention of genocide, are
blocking the peace process and the healing of wounds that are hundreds
of years old.

Here are some examples of these atrocities. Each is a different
instance - some worse than others - some involve only ignorance -
and some folks are learning.

What they all have in common is disrespect.

We will open the ball with an email (consisting of three emails) from
Deb Huglin that is a good example of the dialog concerning Townsend and
of the under/overlying issues rampant in the current uses of archaeology.
Also a great review of history.

You can start here and think backwards - or read the last one
first and have a good time that way, too!

Dear Benita,
I am an archaeologist who has worked both in the States and abroad.
As you are in a university situation, I thought perhaps you would be
interested in the fact that there is no "save" archaeology. Rather,
when any archaeological or historically significant site
is breached in any form of development (including roadways), the
appropriate procedure is to stop and reroute the project so as not to
disturb the site in any way.

This anthropological development of a "save archaeology" form of
terminology and the "business"
of exchanging excavations and studies for money with developers (private or government) is
a very recent development, mainly in the United States.

This development has grown to nightmare proportions in regards to indigenous burials,
habitations, sacred places and technology areas. This has been further enhanced for the
worse by the appointment of National PArks Service archaeology division to "handle" NAGPRA
enforcement.

Rather than working with the tribes and indigenous cultural groups
assisting and protecting indigenous archaeological sites, the
NPS Archaeology division has misappropriated all the NAGPRA
funds to assist the developers and scientists who would
readily dig up everything and anything in the entire country.

They
have created a miasma of paperwork which is unintelligible for the
indigenous people but simple for government agencies and developers.
They have created lengthy and expensive legal battles out of
ridiculous stipulations about genetic and other finite scientific
"studies" relating to the archaeology they are mishandling, while they
totally ignore the oral traditions of the very people they are paid to
assist in every way!

That people inside of university and post-secondary educational systems
are giving lip
service to the "Save" version of archaeology mainly to generate collections and revenue
from digging indiscriminently is preposterous.
In Tennessee alone in the past 20 years,
there have been over 150,000 exhumations of indigenous burials!
Most of this was
sanctioned by (you got it) the NPS Archaeology division under the
lip service that they
are doing someone somewhere favors in regards to NAGPRA.

So here it is:

There is no "save" archaeology.

The only reason this stuff is going on
with the research and "removal" is because the developers and state
agencies have forked
out massive amounts of money to give archaeologists, anthropologists and
other
"professionals" salaries and stipends to do their "studies", "research",
and
"excavations".

It is blood money to keep them quiet.

Much of the burial goods and some
of the human remains of the 150,000 + exhumations is missing, and likely
either in private
collections or being sold on the Gem Channel (which freely hawks even
lithic tools which
bear the unmistakable numbers of excavations right on them).

This needs to stop. The
only way is if the people involved in anthropology departments recognize
this is an
anthropological trend which needs and deserves both study and social and
cultural
rectification.

This is cultural and archaeological genocide.

It is totally unacceptable
to anyone with morals and ethics. Ask the tribal leaders. Ask the
Chattanooga Intertribal council. Ask the repatriation committee of the
National Congress of the
American Indian. Ask the local people who aren't red at all about
seeing kids and loved
ones dug up for no good reason...

Please at least try and understand that whatever anyone in universities
or governments
want is not necessarily ok just because they have a name or backing. In
fact, to know how
long anthropologists have been questioning these activities and the mistreatment of
indigenous Americans, check out "Mukat's People", an anthro book
from the early 1970's
The whole front half of the book takes the first cold hard
anthropological look at the
events in post-secondary and governmental situations involving the
ethnic "materials" and
the people that go with them, and how they have been handled one way
or the other.

Also, there is the element on line and in the community who attempt to
create chaos and
animosity through misinformation. These people are just as out of line
as the government
agents who are creating such an atmosphere of distrust and anger.

It is likely that they
are related, and the fact that the misinformation is on places which are
"hung up" on
repatriation of moral and ethical treatment of indigenous burials after
the free-wheeling
of developers and state agencies for the past two decades is a strong
motivator in the
anthropological sense.
There is money or other gain to be had for the participants.

Why do you assume that the perpetrators could be somehow manipulated
into not continuing their subterfuge and genocidal practices at this
late date in the "game"?

In this regard, you
are simply participating in the perpetration as you have been
conditioned
to do by the
propaganda techniques of the post-secondary anthro departments in the
U.S.
Ask your
foreign colleagues if this is normal where they are... just for a reality
check.

Americans are famous for not practicing science in research and
investigation in the field
of indigenous North and Central Americans.

Even though the oral traditions of over 1000
tribes and cultural groups clearly have always stated the People have
lived on Turtle
Island since Creation, and clearly give reference to giant (pleistocene)
animals and the
Great Flood, anthro departments in the U.S. insist they "migrated" from
parts unknown.

Why? Who would gain from such a hypothesis?

Well, think about the Department of the
Interior and their Mining and other land use businesses... and remember
the Dine' and their Hopi relatives (most have common relatives since the
incarceration on reservations a century ago) are being displaced as you
read this at Black Mesa.
Why? For their coal.
How? Because with the anthro backing of the migration hypothesis,
the U.S. governmental
agencies have bent Darwinistic survival theory to make
"migration" = "invasion" at which
time it is the "survival of the fittest invader".

The anthro departments stand to gain
both governmental monetary support and more indigenous goods for their
collections. Hand
in hand... The migration hypothesis has nothing whatsoever to do with
science. And the
NPS archaeologists are personally involved in an attempt to "prove" that
the Kennewick remains are some guy who migrated here from parts unknown.

They are paid specifically by
the DOI, that is who pays the bulk of their salary. Plus they are
draining the funds
which would have protected the indigenous population and their dead relatives from these
hustlers.

Think hard here. There is a clear anthropological picture if you just stop
seeing what the government backed university presses have been putting in print on the
American Indian against and despite indigenous opposition.

I would be happy to discuss this event further with you, should you wake
up from the
propaganda instilled in anthro departments via government funding during
the "extinction"
program in the early 1900's.

Guess what, nobody is extinct.

The government agencies just try and pretend they aren't related to
anything or anyone in the way of their development... it is a
displacement tactic that Hitler lauded the U.S. government on as he
took steps to handle his "ethnic problem" with U.S. government and
post-secondary institutional isolation and numbering of tribes and
individuals... to make them get extinct one way or the other to take
their land and even their ancestors' bones.

Thank You for your prompt reply to my letter that in itself means a lot
to me. As for who has informed me of these things: we all know how rumors
run. So I come and ask you and your colleagues under the Freedom of
Information act: I ask to be sent a copy of the following items.

I request, archaeology survey, archaeology summary archaeologist notes
of each archaeologist involved in the Townsend archaeology site. From all
of 1999 thru this day of March 15, 2000.
Thank you
Sandra

Ms. S:
As you are aware, I work in the Anthropology Department at the University
of Tennessee, although not as an archaeologist. I am sorry that you have
been misinformed as to what is transpiring with the highway project in
Townsend.

From my interactions with my colleagues who are archaeologists, it does
seem that our Department of Transportation often resists taking the proper
steps to safeguard archaeological sites and burials. In this case,
however, archaeologists are at work determining what archaeological and
human remains lie in the path of the highway project.

They are NOT removing burials. They are engaged in this project with the
Eastern Band of Cherokee fully aware of what is going on. The
Eastern band will collaborate in any decisions to be made about mitigation
The alternative to archaeological survey and mitigation is for the
bulldozers to plow right through whatever is in the path of the road.

Surely you don't find this preferable to having the Cherokee make decisions
about reburial of their ancestors' bones in another resting place
should that be necessary. The days of digging up bones and placing them in
labs are long over; UT archaeologists comply fully with state and federal
legislation concerning protection of graves.

Please ask the people who stirred up this red herring issue to inform
themselves of the facts.
Benita J. Howell, PhD
Anthropology Department
250 South Stadium Hall
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-0720

Editor Note: Well, we will see. The way I tally this one up is
that Benita seems to have good intentions and cares about respecting
folks. Sandy did not get the information she asked for. (Unless that
"carbon copy" to the Secretary of the State government was effective.)

And I don't even ever want Deb angry with me. Especially revealing
is (I typed "was" and then reconsidered) the parallel shown between
American and Hitlerian tactics.

Hopefully, more folks like Sandy will take an interest in this
issue, for until there is respect there will be no peace.

Here is a separate page with a dialog showing
that auction houses are still contuing to sell
burial items in defiance of laws.

Ten thousand years ago (8,000 B.C.) where the Guyandotte and Mud Rivers
meet in West Virginia, hunters built fire pits and sat down for a meal.
They left pottery shards, an indication that they were changing from
their wandering ways.

This discovery was made while bodies were being moved from an
1830-1850 graveyard that was used by the Merritts and the Strupes,
founders in that area.

Though a Morgantown archaeologist, Gloria Gozdzik, says that the hunting
ground "Is an impressive find," excavation has gone ahead to make way for
a state prison.

These next four articles are very strange, as they show clearly the
conflict between the Native American Indians who are trying to
protect their burial grounds, and the "tribal leaders"
who are willing to allow grave desecration for money.
Gotcha!
These first three articles are in order in the same Clamor Six,
to save clicking back and forth. Scroll down a couple to see the
money report.

So. What do you think? Here is how it sits with me: There was
a time I did not know; this was ignorance. Then came the time that I
did not think this had anything to do with me; indifference.
Now I realize that whether or not a pain is personal to me,
that pain still exists; empathy.